Thursday, November 24, 2016

12 years on from writing Lovemarks: the Future Beyond Brands, Accenture Interactive – a
branch of the global consulting company – has produced The Love Index,
following an 18 month study involving 27,000 participants in the US, UK and
Brazil.

Their conclusion: Love is a science; and there is a
formula – Fun, Relevant, Engaging, Social, Helpful. Spelling FRESH. Cute!

Key findings were:

Each industry has its own Love profile. Relevance,
for example, is the highest dimension for the auto industry.

Disrupters that lead with Helpful, Relevant and
Engaging become loved. They cite Tesla and Amazon as examples.

Digital companies are most prone to be loved,
emphasizing the role of technology in enabling brands to be Helpful and Social.
Google and Amazon are cited.

Netflix topped the study’s most loved brand.

Several things about this initiative stand out for
me.

It’s good to see further validation of the idea I
floated into the world in 1999 by way of speeches and in 2004 by way of the Lovemarks
book.

More significantly is the provenance of the Love Index. Accenture “is a
leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of
services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and
operations. With more than 373,000 people serving clients in more than 120
countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and
lives.”

According
to
Ad Age, the top 3, and 8 of the top-10 ad agencies are consultancies like
Deloitte, Accenture, KPMG and PwC. McKinsey is slowly building an agency arm.

Ad
industry pundit Avi Dan noted in Forbes that in the last 18 months Accenture
acquired 40 marketing firms while within a single week IBM acquired three
online ad agencies.

It’s an
oft-quoted projection from Gartner that the biggest users of corporate IT will
be CMOs. Every one of the trillions of daily consumer transactions in the world
adds to the galaxy of data. Highly sophisticated algorithms and data-mining
techniques spew out streams of patterns and insights – if only there was time
to keep up with the flow.

Data is a
dangerous path to ride. Look at the Clinton and Trump campaigns. Clinton’s
campaign was significantly driven by an algorithm called Ada, informing her messaging, ad placement, where she
went and where she didn’t. Big fail. Trump traded heavily on negative emotion
(loss, fear) and gut feeling. It was ugly, but effective.

For my workover of the
Emotion/Data equation, see the Red Paper I published in 2015 Loyalty Beyond Reason. Love remains a winning idea,
more than ever in this VUCA world. As the bumper sticker says, “Love Trumps
Hate.”

Posted by
Kevin Roberts

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

In the 1990’s I became very close to Australia’s finest athletes as Castlemaine Perkins in Queensland, one of the breweries we bought from Alan Bond, sponsored the country’s top teams – the Wallabies, the Kangaroos, and the Cricket team. I was lucky enough to spend a good deal of time with their Captains/Leaders Nick Farr-Jones, Mal Meninga and Allan Border.

I had dinner in Sydney last night with Nick and his wife Angie. Nick’s had a great post rugby career in banking in Paris and Sydney. He started life as a lawyer and was asking a Senior Partner during his rookie days what kind of lawyer he should be? He was told there are four kinds of people… Finders, Minders, Binders, and Grinders. Figure out which you are and surround yourself with the others. Brilliant advice. Which are you?

Posted by
Kevin Roberts

Thursday, November 10, 2016

I first saw him live in the 60’s in London.
I last saw him live in New York City a couple of years ago.
Last month he said he ‘was ready to die’.
“Like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in a midnight choir.
I have tried, in my way, to be Free”.

Thank you Leonard. Hallelujah.

Leonard and my son Ben

Posted by
Kevin Roberts

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Some things in life are bad They can really make you mad Other things just make you swear and curse. When you're chewing on life's gristle Don't grumble, give a whistle And this'll help things turn out for the best...

And...always look on the bright side of life... Always look on the light side of life...

Rise Up Ye Radical Optimists

Reasons to be Cheerful (Thanks to Ian Drury)

The American people have spoken and we all need to give it a go.

Given the personality of the man, his lack of ideology, his abject lack of experience, his policy bypass, and his narcissism – this isn’t going to be easy (for me anyway).

But we’ve got to get on the program somehow.

So this morning I’m trying to adjust to the latest example of our increasingly VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world and take a SUPERVUCA (Vibrant, Unreal, Crazy, Astounding) positive view.

So far:

Reagan turned into a great President.

Hillary was a zero sum, status quo, defensive option.

The system needs to change; the people want change; Trump is a change agent. He gets things done.

America’s Founding Fathers blessed us with the gift of a Constitution full of checks and balances. Presidential power is far from absolute.

Out of crisis usually comes improvement.

That’s all so far!

Posted by
Kevin Roberts

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

A red letter day. The new Jack Reacher book is on my desk. Night School – Lee Child’s 21st Reacher adventure takes us back to 1996 where it all started… am off on a 20 hour flight to Auckland today – in Mr Reacher’s company.

Publisher’s Pitch: From Langley to Hamburg, Jalalabad to Kiev, Night School moves like a bullet through a treacherous landscape of double crosses, faked identities, and new and terrible enemies, as Reacher maneuvers inside the game and outside the law.